US senators on Saturday were scrambling to open debate on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, which is key to the president’s second-term agenda.
The bill cannot advance to the House until a debate is held and a final vote on the legislation passes the Senate. But Republicans have been divided by the controversial bill, with some rejecting the proposal to cut welfare programmes in order to cover tax breaks, and others demanding deeper cuts.
After the procedural vote to move to a floor debate on the measure opened on Saturday evening, several Republican had voted against it, putting pressure on the remaining holdouts to toe the party line.
Meanwhile, the tech billionaire Elon Musk has again voiced criticism of bill, describing it as “utterly insane and destructive”.
Here are the key stories at a glance:
Senate Republicans scrambling to pass bill by Trump deadline
A vote in the US Senate, on whether or not to open debate on Donald Trump’s package of tax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered deportation funds, formally titled “the One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, stalled for hours on Saturday, as Republicans inclined to vote against the measure were pressured to support it.
Soon after the vote opened at 7.30pm local time in Washington, three Republican senators joined all 47 Democrats to vote against the bill, meaning the remaining 50 Republican senators all needed to vote in favor to give vice-president JD Vance the chance to cast the tie-breaking vote and clear the procedural hurdle.
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Musk calls Trump’s big bill ‘utterly insane and destructive’
The billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday criticized the latest version of Donald Trump’s sprawling tax and spending bill, calling it “utterly insane and destructive”.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” Musk wrote on Saturday.
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Biden and Harris attend funeral of slain Minnesota lawmaker
The Democratic former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral on Saturday that was attended by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The former president and vice-president were joined by more than 1,000 other mourners.
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Eric Trump suggests he could run for US president
Eric Trump has hinted that he or another of the Trump family could run for president when his father’s second term in the White House comes to an end.
Eric, who is co-executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, said, the road to the White House “would be an easy one” if he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps.
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Spate of arrests of civilians impersonating Ice officers
Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.
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Ice arrests of US military veterans and relatives on the rise
The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.
Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicleis one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.
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What else happened today:
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 27 June 2025.
